Behind the Scenes
by tabancvh
Summary: In which almost nobody forgets that Neville spends the majority of his time voluntarily drop-kicking, recalcitrant man-eating vegetation and he's arbitrarily put in charge of making sure the Trio get all the help they need but don't ask for.


Sometimes Neville wondered if Harry, Ron and Hermione really believed that they were being stealthy, holed up in the common room into the wee hours of the morning hunched over dusty tomes from the restricted section or arguing in not really all that hushed voices around the fire.

He yawned into the sleeve of his dressing gown, greeted the house-elf who had an unholy affinity for socks with a nod and listened as Hermione snapped: " _Really Ronald_ , do you honestly believe—" and Harry stared off into space blankly.

Part of him wanted to ask what was going on. Wanted to help.

The other part of him recognized that while Harry, Ron and Hermione were good people—they'd earned their only slightly ironic moniker doing their student-vigilante-hero thing after all—they didn't think much of his skills.

He didn't exactly blame them, he'd been caught in the vanishing stair again the other day because he'd spaced out thinking about his new project in the greenhouses (a tentacle ridden cross-species of magical _veriformans,_ the one that's about as easy to wrangle as a rabid bear—fittingly he's classified it _veriformans magus ursa_ , and he's been calling it Ursi).

And while he had an undeniable instinct for dealing with homicidally dangerous magical plants, he knew that his other magic was passable at best and a joke at worst. Still, just because he didn't have Harry's heroic destiny, Ron's quick-draw or Hermione's methodically sinusoidal brainwaves or even a fraction of their magical talent didn't mean he couldn't be useful. If nothing else he had access to a great many indescribably dangerous and semi-sentient specimens of plant-life that they could use to waylay their enemies.

The more sensible parts of him reminded him that his friends and housemates were as crazy as a bag full of cats and that not getting involved was probably what kept his grades from record lows and allowed him time not spent in the hospital wing with grievous magically inflicted injuries.

He shuffled past their super-secret-save-the-school from danger and/or You-Know-Who meeting and into the boy's bathroom to relieve himself and wash some of the staleness out of his mouth and then shuffled back out preparing to go straight back to bed.

He took a second look at the trio—shamelessly rubbernecking his way across the room and trying to discern what heinous plots they were going to foil in spectacular fashions and how that might muck with his carefully thought out schedule this year—and noticed how exhausted they all looked.

He immediately felt bad for being uncharitable.

Here his fellow Gryffindors were putting themselves in between him and unknown danger and was he actually complaining about that?

Sheepishly he bent to address the sock-happy elf that was always cleaning the tower.

"Um, hello, sorry to be a bother but would you mind bringing that lot a tray from the kitchens, and setting up a small privacy ward for them?" he asked jerking his head at the trio in the corner.

The house elf writhed in paroxysms of undiluted ecstasy at being asked to do something, or perhaps at being asked to do something politely but just as he was about to start in on the now-familiar declarations of Neville's status as a Wizard-Almost-As-Great-As-The-Great-Harry-Potter-Sir! Neville put a finger to his lips and gave the elf a small conspiratorial wink.

"Shhh, don't want to interrupt them while they're at their important business, right? Oh and don't tell them it was me that sent out for it if you would, I don't want them to think I'm being nosey."

Immediately the elf clapped both hands over his mouth and nodded vigorously before popping away with a soft crack that went all but unnoticed by the triad, who were busily having a quiet but vicious argument about something or another.

Neville shook his head. A fond smile playing on his mouth. And watched as the Golden Trio fell upon the tea and the small mountain of cucumber sandwiches like ravening wolves for a moment before shuffling back up the stairs to sleep.

He passed Katie Bell staggering out of the seventh year boys' dorm in blue bunny slippers and a quidditch t-shirt that Neville was fairly sure had once belonged to Oliver Wood.

"Urgh, do we know what disaster we're looking forward to this year?" she groaned, spotting the trio.

"When do we ever?"

Katie snorted.

"Too right, well, you let the martyr club know we're with them if they need us, and don't let them accidentally blow themselves up or something," she said clapping him on the shoulder before shuffling over to the girls' stairs.

Neville hummed a vague agreement and continued up to his own dorm.

That wasn't actually a bad idea, now that he thought about it. Helping the trio out behind the scenes. Merlin knew they could use it. He'd talk to Dean and Seamus about it in the morning.

* * *

 **AN:** I love Neville. Like a lot. Vague timeline but I imagine this happening somewhere in the early part of fourth year.

Done for the Level-Up Competition on HPFC (T:S1/T2).


End file.
